ASTRONOMER ON LIFE MISSION : SPACE SCIENTIST'S 36-YEAR QUEST FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE CONTINUES.

Byline: Robert S. Boyd Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Water splashes in the atrium fountain. California sunshine streams through walls of glass and redwood. Computers hum below-stairs. And just perhaps, somewhere out in the Milky Way 30 light years from Earth, an alien civilization is watching Green Bay beat Kansas City in Super Bowl I, which was telecast from the Los Angeles Coliseum on Jan. 15, 1967.

At least that's the dream of astronomer Frank Drake, 65, the grand old man of humanity's search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.

For 36 years Drake has hunted in vain - brushing off the skeptics - for signs of life beyond the solar system, but the recent detection of planets circling five nearby stars has bolstered his hopes. Despite the science-fiction flavor of his mission, it has the backing of respected high-tech business executives and the head of the federal space agency.

``We've always assumed that planetary systems were abundant. Now our assumption has become a fact,'' said Drake, president of the privately financed SETI Institute near Stanford University. ``We know there is nothing freakish about our solar system.''

Although none of the strange new planets resembles Earth, several of them conceivably could harbor a form of primitive life. Their discovery gives astronomers confidence that more planets soon will be found.

NASA Administrator Dan Goldin has made the search for extraterrestrial life a prime goal of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The space agency is designing a huge telescope to orbit beyond Jupiter to find Earth-size planets and look for oxygen, methane or water, telltale evidence of living organisms.

Using a seven-part equation he invented, Drake estimates that there are at least 1,000 civilizations among the 100 billion stars in our galaxy inhabited by societies advanced enough to receive and send electronic signals across the vastness of space.

The early stages of life on other planets probably would be simple, one-celled organisms, quite unable to communicate with us, Drake said. But he predicted that evolution, in time, would almost surely lead to the development of intelligence.

``Intelligence would have so much survival value that many kinds of intelligent creatures could evolve on a single planet,'' he said. ``They would be extraordinarily different from us, of course.''

To answer the question ``is anyone out there?'' the SETI Institute and three other teams - at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and Ohio State University - are scanning the sky with giant radio telescopes, listening for pulses from beyond the solar system.

So far, the only meaningful signals they have pulled out of space have been of earthly origin, from orbiting satellites or spacecraft. For example, they can still hear the faint calls of Pioneer 10, a NASA satellite launched in 1972, which is now wandering far beyond Pluto.

``There were no mysterious or unexplained signals,'' said Jill Tarter, a SETI astronomer, after a search of 208 stars from Australia last winter.

Of course, interstellar communication could be a two-way street.

While we are eavesdropping on them, Earth has been leaking powerful radio waves into space - in the form of television signals - for half a century. By now those beams, traveling at the speed of light (6 trillion miles a year) have reached the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

``Every star within 30 light years has received `I Love Lucy' and `Super Bowl I,' '' said Drake in an interview at SETI headquarters in Palo Alto. ``If anyone is listening, they may be wondering who won the Kennedy-Nixon election.''

Similarly, if an apparent message were received from another planet, earthlings would have to figure out what, if anything, it meant.

``It would be like listening to the surf,'' said Paul Horowitz, a Harvard astronomer. ``You hear a sound, but you don't know if it's a sea gull or a child or what the child is saying.''

Furthermore, because of the time radio waves take to travel between stars, return messages would only be heard by succeeding generations.

Besides needing enormous patience, the white-haired, grandfatherly Drake must put up with the unwillingness of many Americans to take his life's work seriously, even though it has been endorsed by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

Drake's scientific credentials are impeccable. He has advanced degrees from Cornell and Harvard Universities. He discovered the radiation belts around Jupiter. He operated the world's largest radio telescope. He teaches astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Nevertheless, Drake acknowledged that ``the giggle factor is a constant problem, especially with politicians.''

In 1991, Congress voted to give NASA and the SETI Institute $100 million to mount an intensive 10-year search for extraterrestrial life. The project had barely begun when Congress canceled it in 1993 amid snide jokes about the project's failure to find ``little green men.''

Undaunted, Drake took his case to wealthy, high-tech executives David Packard and William Hewlett, founders of the Hewlett-Packard Co.; Gordon Moore, chairman of Intel Corp.; and Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Inc. Together they promised SETI $5 million a year to carry on the search without government funds.

``I told them we have the means to detect other civilizations,'' Drake said. ``Finding an intelligent signal would change everything. It would be the most important discovery we could ever make.''

In a book he published in 1992, Drake said he fully expected the discovery of signals from an extraterrestrial civilization before 2000.

Half of that period has elapsed, and Drake acknowledges that time is running out. At his age, he implied, he might not live to see his dream fulfilled.

``I sure would like to see it in my lifetime, but I can't calculate the chances of success'' he said. ``I don't wonder whether this will happen - my only question is when.''

Even if the search doesn't turn out as Drake hopes, he doesn't think his life was spent on a wild goose chase.

``If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't do anything else,'' he said. ``In fact, I would put more effort into it.

Tarter shares his enthusiasm. ``It's exciting to be in on the beginning of the search,'' she said. ``But it may be my granddaughter who finishes it.''